Irresponsibility

“ The irresponsibility of her position in great things has created a corresponding irresponsibility in other scarcely less serious matters; for instance, in a freedom of expression about persons that a man would not dare [Pg 236] to indulge in, because he knows he must be prepared to defend, with his life, if need be, the accuracy of his statement. I have sometimes thought the two most irresponsible of creatures in speech are a college boy and a woman ”

“ And slowly he is overcome by that sense of irresponsibility, of bitterness, of carelessness of the future, of improvident fatalism that takes possession of those living under continuously adverse circumstances. ”

“ Justice that Rewards.—Whoever has fully understood the doctrine of absolute irresponsibility can no longer include the so called rewarding and punishing justice in the idea of justice, if the latter be taken to mean that to each be given his due. ”

“ But they are fast finding out that the causes of the trouble, in most instances, are weak bodies, or untrained senses, or sluggish minds, or lack of purpose, or general immaturity, or ignorance of how to work with others, or an all round irresponsibility, or a combination of from two to seven of these common human defects. ”

“ And this mania about responsibility has been disastrous for you too—you know that perfectly well. It has spoiled your life by keeping you in a perpetual state of fuss and worry, and of dissatisfaction with your own conduct and everybody else's. ”

“ Can I leave them to vice, to suffering, to crime, and yet be innocent? Will not their souls be required at my hands, now that God shows me their condition? I feel the pressure of a responsibility scarcely thought of an hour ago. ”

“ Another thing will very much aid you in bearing this evil, and that is, trying to imagine yourself in the situation of the one you have displeased, and thinking [158] whether you should do any differently yourself. How do you behave when you depend on some child or companion to do something, and by ignorance or carelessness the thing is left undone or is spoilt? Do you shut up your mouth and utter not a word of complaint, or fault-finding? Try for one week to go without finding fault with any body, or any thing that crosses your plans or wishes, and see how hard it is to refrain! ”

“ Dimly it seemed to her that they were all over ready, over eager to condemn the man whose one crime had been mere heedlessness, who was surely hurting no one but himself, but who offended their ideas in refusing to take life seriously and bear the common burden of responsibility. ”

“ The responsibility rests not upon you; enough it is for you to know that we have the power to detain you, and that we exercise that power, as we most probably shall another, still less conducive to your comfort. ”

“ But whence the Cause of this strange Misconduct and Omission? It springs, as I take it, from Ignorance, or Inconsiderateness, or Partiality, or Passion, or from all together; but the most frequently of any, from false Tenderness, and blind Indulgence.
Every Man has his own way of judging, and generally abides by it right or wrong. I knew a Gentleman of refined Understanding, who frequently forfeited it, by a boundless injudicious Fondness for his Children. ”

“ There are, of course, cases in which an irresponsible person is punished as if he were responsible, pour encourager les autres who are responsible. The question of the right or wrong of this procedure is the question of its average effect on the character of men at any particular time. ”

“ You seem to think that the fact of responsibility is in danger unless it rests upon the will, and this will you regard as something without a cause, springing into being in some mysterious way, without father or mother, without seed or soil, or rain or light. ”

“ Not regardless of consequences, we must yet meet consequences; seeing the hazards which surround the discharge of public duty, it must yet be discharged. For myself, Sir, I shun no responsibility justly devolving on me, here or elsewhere, in attempting to maintain the cause. ”

“ And this is more especially the case when the mistakes and the blankness have been caused by our own actions. There is not even stolid philosophy to come to our aid, a shrugging of the shoulders, a foisting of the blame on to fate. It may be that the majority of the incidents have been forced upon us, that we have not been free agents in the matter, but if we must of honesty say,—Here or there was the mistake which led to them, and I made that mistake of my own free will,—we cannot turn to philosophy regarding fate for our comfort. ”

“ We have been taught that all right and wrong originate in the will of an irresponsible being. It is some time before we see how the inexorable ‘Thou shalt and shalt not,’ are carved into the nature of things. ”

“ No human soul can with certainty say, "I would not do this or that, under any circumstances whatever!" Circumstance and impulse are the only two forces that create cowards or heroes. Principles, will-power, virtue, are really subservient to those two. ”

“ So, at least, I live within compass, keep myself ready for action, and can shoot the gulf, at last, with decency. If there be anything farcical in such a life, the blame is not mine; let it lie at fate’s and nature’s door. ”

“ Surely, a fearful responsibility rested somewhere,—a stern necessity was laid on some one to cry put against the wickedness. If the strong ones were silent it might be because their experience had not been like her own. ”

“ Endued with a mind powerful but perverted, a temper careless but impetuous, and feelings kindly but irritable, he, by the early association with depraved companions, rendered himself, by one false step, induced by a too ready compliance, an outcast, excluded from the pale of orderly society, and condemned to herd with the very refuse of mankind. ”

“ Of course you excuse yourself by acknowledging "your share of responsibility" for the unpleasantness of conditions, but if you will examine carefully you will find that your portion of the responsibility includes most of the good things in your conditions, whilst you have portioned off almost all the responsibility for the bad things among your protesting--or indifferent--relatives. You always say, "I try so hard," but you never balance that with, "He tries so hard,"--"They try so hard." ”

“ Nothing in Nature seemed to be burdened with responsibility or care or remorse or worry or ambition or any of the things with which we fret our lives. Being in a wholly irresponsible frame of mind, I could not help wondering if man has not gone woefully astray in making himself responsible for so much. ”

“ This mood, ready and natural enough in youth, was an instrument of which my passion made effective use; I pictured the consternation of my advisers with hardly less pleasure than the delight of her whom I sought to serve. My sense of responsibility was dulled and deadened; I had rather do wrong than do nothing, cause harm than be the cause of nothing, that men should blame me rather than not canvass my actions or fail to attribute to me any initiative. ”

“ The awful consequences, the sin, and the woe that followed that one irreverent, thoughtless act might well make us all more thoughtful, more mindful of the terrible responsibility that follows all our acts, the smallest as well as the greatest. We can’t shake off that personal responsibility. It follers us tight as our shadders even into our hours of recreation, showin’ us that we should not only work nobly, but recreate nobly and innocently and reverently. ”

“ There, after all, is the rub. A want of hardy self-respect, an unwillingness to face with dignity the actual facts and necessities of our situation in life,—this, after all, is the worst and most dangerous feature of the case. ”

“ But for the majority, who are neither brave, self-originating, nor earnest, but the mere puppets of circumstance, safety and comfort may, and actually do, merely make their lives mean and petty, effeminate and dull. ”

“ But is he freed from responsibility because he is temporarily governed by his instincts, or is he steered by his instincts only when and because he throws away responsibility? Is it impulsive, instinctive action that excuses him, or is it excuses that are wanted by him, which makes him call his action, or the part of it he wants to be excused for, instinctive? ”

“ God puts it there, not I.' You may refuse this responsibility, you may be too weak, too wilful, too selfish to set upon your own wicked indulgence of a foolish appetite, but the responsibility is there, and no living man or woman can take it from you. ”

“ She would have to stand by and see him at his worst, looking on no longer as an irresponsible, as well as a helpless, spectator, but as one who had undertaken responsibility for him, who must feel for him what he did not for himself, who must be sensitive while he was callous, wounded while his skin went unpierced. ”

“ What is laid to my charge, beyond that I have lived like a gentleman, and striven to eat and drink and dress like one? And I’ll wager my life that for one who will blame him, there will be ten—no, not ten, fifty—to condemn me. ”

“ I beg your Excellency will be persuaded that no alteration in the temper of my mind, or apprehension for my safety, induces me to take the step of addressing you, but that it is to rescue myself from an imputation of having assumed a mean character for treacherous purposes or self-interest, a conduct incompatible with the principles which actuate me, as well as my condition in life. ”

“ After all our precautions against ostentatiousness, censure of others, and the like, our very practice, if accounted of any moment, will probably be regarded as implying blame of those who allow themselves in the things from which we think it our duty to abstain ”

“ But over and above these common and these exceptional instances, one cannot escape the conviction that irresponsible power is opportunity in all hands and a direct temptation in some to cruelty, and that it affords horrible development to those morbid cases in which cruelty becomes a passion. ”

“ The vital and quickening principle in this section is the stress it lays upon man’s responsibility for negligence, and the indirect consequences of his deed. All sin is selfish, and all selfishness ignores the right of others. ”

“ But even if they gave more trouble than they do, no pains would be wasted in ascertaining the germs out of which has assuredly been unfolded every form of moral restraint which controls our actions and shapes our conduct at the present moment. ”

“ Such impulses to do wrong without adequate motive occur not infrequently among those whose mental condition is not perfectly normal, and this must always be taken into consideration in the ultimate decision as to their responsibility for their action. ”

“ Again, the fatalist, who rejects practically the moral judgment that refers the issues of a deliberate voluntary determination to the voluntary or personal agent as its responsible centre, insanely sits still in the midst of danger, and refrains from exerting a power which he denies. ”

“ He put himself under obligation--in moments of supreme need--to dangerous persons, and suffered from the familiarity and perhaps the contempt of some who were his inferiors in breeding, in heart, and in soul. ”

“ Everything that has been forbidden, by discretion, by caution, by self-respect, by atavistic inhibition, seems suddenly to leap up out of the darkness and seize upon one with fierce, indescribable caresses. ”

“ As a consequence, they assert, it is more or less beyond their power to control themselves, and their responsibility for certain acts is surely somewhat impaired. This is a rather satisfying doctrine for those who do not feel quite equal to the effort of conquering vicious or unfortunate tendencies. ”

“ But according to every hypothesis as to the law, and the temptations and pressures towards vice, here are the individuals who, of all the society, have yielded to said pressure. These are of the worst substance for enduring pressure! ”

“ And if now it is held that something more must be done—if, notwithstanding perpetual explanations and denunciations and exhortations, the misconduct is so great that society is endangered, why, after all this insistance has failed, is it expected that more insistance will succeed? ”

“ I feel that I am placed higher than I deserve, and at the same time that I am taking greater responsibilities than ever were assumed by me before. You will be indulgent to my mistakes and shortcomings,—and who can expect to avoid them? But the world will be cruel, and the times are threatening. ”

“ To this end we are placed under stress of circumstances where the temptation comes to repeat the offence, and the woe comes for what has been done until we learn there is no discount in the law of retribution, and we must pay the uttermost farthing. ”

“ If any of us has angered you, before we do you further harm, cease your mad behaviour now, for you are acting wickedly; and we will lend you our aid in any enterprise—wise or mad." But it cannot be; they have no success. ”

“ You remind me that I omitted one item in my defence, the mere mention of which will answer many of your queries. Who can tell how often a person, blamed for the disregard of many considerations which ought to influence the conduct, is inflamed by those very considerations, restrained by those very motives? ”

“ We have never gone out of our way to look for trouble, being more inclined to attend to our own affairs than to oversee those of our neighbors, and, yet, when, repeatedly, gross acts of injustice and cruelty have been forced under our observation, we have, at times, been aroused to a state of what we have honestly believed to be righteous indignation, and, in these circumstances, we have conducted ourselves in accordance with our ability and the fervor of our convictions. ”